“How can Software Vendors Simplify their Software Licensing Rules?” This is a question that will, without a doubt, inspire a vast array of suggestions from within the SAM community. So, with a multitude of vendors to analyse and a huge range of dividing opinions, we asked our SAMPanel what they thought needs to be done to simplify software licensing rules…

May Turnbull | SAM Consultant at EasySAM | Connect with May

As software vendors grow, adapt and expand, the need to alter and adopt different products and their licensing metrics become a necessary evil. The result has been a variety of different licensing models and metrics that unnecessarily complicate things. There are a lot of manufacturers out there that are aware of this issue and are attempting to simplify their licensing ‘rules’. Without delving into too many vendor-specifics, we feel that this can generally be achieved by any one of the following:

Reducing Variations

Having too many different editions and then various metrics available for those editions, creates confusion amongst buyers. Oracle for example have accrued over 80 different license metrics down the years. They are not the only ones…

To read the entirety of May’s Submission Click Here

 

Rory Canavan | Owner of SAMCharter | Connect with Rory

For licensing terms and conditions to change, software vendors need to have demonstrated to them the benefits of having a simplified model. A few strokes of a pen could obviate the need for CALs, or the requirement to report CPU cores (as an example) but how would that translate in regards to impacting their bottom line?

Currently, SAM is mired at an operational-level of IT because the level of expertise required to understand licensing and calculating a licence position is not a skill or attribute that resides at board level. However, if a software vendor comes to the realisation that the board controls/makes the major decisions around company direction (and therefore, spend) then keeping licensing knowledge at a board-level of comprehension and understanding, will see their software…

To read the entirety of Rory’s Submission Click Here

 

Sherry Irwin | President and Principal Consultant at Technology Asset Management | Connect with Sherry

The emergence of increasingly complex license models (rules) began in the 1980s, ostensibly to better align license costs with customer value (and affordability), where value was associated with the size of the machine on which the software was installed: the larger the machine, the more the software would be used and the more value obtained.

For several reasons, this foundational premise proved to be erroneous in many situations; but, it did have the effect of increased revenues for software vendors – a windfall not to be ignored.

So, today both customers and vendors have to deal with complex, often nonsensical, license models (rules), for which significant and dedicated resources are required; and, which create conflict…

To read the entirety of Sherry’s Submission Click Here

 

Niall Eddery | Senior Consultant at Livingstone | Connect with Niall

There are many reasons for the current complexity in licensing rules and metrics including end user requirements, vendors leveraging rules for competitive advantage, technology changes as well as vendors ensuring that their bottom line is not harmed by any of the above! With these reasons in mind, it is hard to envisage vendors going too far to simplify the licensing rules any time soon! What would help though is a lot more clarity around what each metric means and how it should be measured. It is currently too difficult for end users to measure compliance, and when the auditors need to use tools and scripts that produce outputs that are unintelligible to all but the most hardened licensing specialists, things have gone too far!

The first thing I suggest is that vendors provide customers with more tightly defined metrics, and customers should require that vendors provide them with tools or instructions on how to measure usage as part of day to day operations. If the measurement method is not available as part of operational activities, technologists will always struggle to manage compliance.

To read the entirety of Niall’s Submission Click Here

 

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